December 30, 2009

This is an interesting site to recommend to intermediate or advanced EFL learners. LOUDLIT.org has a collection of novels , short stories, poems and children stories you can both read and listen to. Besides enjoying the story you can also learn the pronunciation of words.

1. Select the story2. Then look for the Read & Listen button

3. You'll be taken to a browser where you can Read the page and listen to the story being read.

December 25, 2009

I´d like to dedicate my post today to a very talented Portuguese teacher called Alexandra Franciscowho started blogging in 2008. Although she says she´s not tech savvy, I dare deny her after seeing her work and reading her great posts.

She shares webtools she discovers in her great blog written in Portuguese TOOLS OF THE DAY.

December 20, 2009

Originally, we tried http://wetoku.com for the interview but we had delay both in sound and image. The result was a catastrophe. Therefore, we decided to use http://screenr.com to record our interview in Skype and it worked beautifully.

December 18, 2009

No, LIFE FEAST wasn´t one of the winners BUT IT WAS A RUNNER UP in the "Best Educational Tech Support Blog".

I´d like to thank everyone for voting for Life Feast and at the same time congratulate "iLearn Technology" and "Langwitches" for their wonderful work. It´s an honour to be in the same list with such great bloggers. I recommend you visit their blogs, they really do deserve to be winners.

December 12, 2009

I just love sending and receiving video messages by e-mail. Sometimes it's so much easier and faster to explain what you want to say instead of writing. The tool I've used for this purpose is called TOKBOX, but my post today is about a similar site which I found today via José Antonio's blog.

With WINKBALL you can send video messages to people via e-mail, you can create video messages and embed them to blogs, you can create video walls where other people can participate and you can also create a video blog where instead of writing you record yourself speaking. All you need is a webcam and a free account.

HOW CAN WE USE THIS SITE WITH STUDENTS?

in class blogs, the teacher can embed messages to students.

the teacher can also create video-dictations and send it to sts via e-mail.

students can record video messages in response to a question the teacher has asked them.

December 11, 2009

My favourite video editing tool is ANIMOTO, however, I don't know what happened but lots of educators who used to have a free account for creating longer videos just had their rights (to longer videos) cancelled. :(

Therefore, yesterday I was trying to find an alternative and tried out STUPEFLIX which is free. You see, teachers earn so little (at least in Brazil) and I am really, really FOR the free webtools available.

You can add both pictures and videos to Stupeflix, download music from your computer, add text, select some effects, create the video and download it to your computer.

December 9, 2009

is my personal blog which started as a space where I tried the tools I was in contact with as I joined the Learning With Computers Yahoo Group in 2006. I had no intention of publishing anything pretentious and as I became more and more enthusiastic about blogging, it became an extension of my learning experience, a space for sharing and learning.

Most of the times, I share tools, brainstorm ideas on how to use them in class, share e- projects my colleagues and I have developed, and other times it's pure FUN.

I can't say enough how much I've learned through blogging and how many wonderful people I've met (virtually). One thing I can say is : "Life Feast has made life even richer."

2009

I'm very happy to share with my friends that LIFE FEAST has been nominated for the 2009 Edublog Awards under three categories:

I've written about various photo editors where you can add your picture to a preset template. With PhotoFunia, besides having cool images you can use, you can also make animated images from your pictures. After downloading your picture, you have the alternative to save it to your computer, send it as a postcard, grab the embed code or save as an avatar.

December 8, 2009

This is the event many EFL educators anxiously wait for: the Electronic Online Village Sessions, a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL Convention.

For six weeks , participants can engage with ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by the four-day land-based TESOL convention and will allow a fuller development of ideas and themes of the convention or of professional interest in general.

ALL SESSIONS ARE FREE

Registration starts on January 4th, 2010 and the session runs for six weeks until Feb 21st, 2010.

December 3, 2009

This is a post I dedicate to a dear friend called Andressa Cardoso(twitter: dessa24).

I hadn't written about my cancer in my blog because this was a space I wanted to keep intact, until now.

Yesterday, after another chemo session, as I came into my living-room I found a wonderful package sent by Andressa by mail. Andressa has just lost her mom who died of cancer and had asked me if she could send me some books she had bought for her mom, which I felt very honoured to receive. Now, if you've ever had a chemo, you know that you don't feel so well immediately after that. When I opened this wonderful box she sent me, my eyes filled w/ tears. I could literally feel her love for her mom in every little gift she put into this magical box.

One of the gifts was the book "Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips" by Kris Carr. Today Andressa sent me the link to her site CRAZY SEXY CANCER which I'll definitely follow.

I discovered a cancer in my right breast in May 2009, had it removed and was recommended 8 chemo sessions as an adjuvant treatment. Thank God, there seems to be no apparent metastasis but there's a risk of recurrence. Due to negative limph nodes found under my arm (which indicates no metastasis) I've been denied a treatment (by my Health Assistance Plan - Unimed) which could increase my survival rate and diminish the risk of recurrence. In Brazil , the drug Taxotere is only indicated to metastatic patients although research has proved node-negative patients could also benefit from that. I don't think I and other node-negative patients have to wait until a recurrence happens to have the right to the drug, am I wrong? After receiving the denial to the drug, I recorded a video (in Portuguese) so that other people would know what's happening and we have been in contact with lawyers to see what we can do. Now, the lawyers are fighting for us.

WELCOME!

I'm Ana Maria Menezes. An EFL teacher, teacher developer and online moderator. An enthusiastic blogger and curious researcher. M.A. in Linguistic Studies with special interest in teacher development in online environments.